Daily Chronicle: Painting Points, End of 2020 Q1

Q1 for 2020 has just about come to and end (end of day today) and it was not a bad first quarter for the year in regards to Painting Points.  If your not familiar with my Painting Points, it is something I picked up many many many years ago from another blogger and it helps me keep track and motivates me to keep painting through out the year.

For Q1 2020 I scored 145.5 points, which is not too shabby.  March was a little slow for me, but I still got a few models completed.  My main priority was to get to get models completed for AdeptiCon and once those were done, I took a slight a break, then AdeptiCon was cancelled and now I need to set myself another goal line for when to have models completed and more than likely that will be NOVA Open.  My issue with that is it is still six months out and need to decide on some 2000 point lists for my Imperial Fists.  I believe I have them narrowed down to 14 lists (LOL).  Worst case scenario, I already do have 2000 points completed for my Imperial Fists if I do not paint another model this year, but that will not be the case.  I will always be adding to my Imperial Fists, but at this moment I am in no rush, so it will be what I feel like painting at that moment.  Then I always have my Tyranids to also keep me busy when I get tired of painting Space Marines.

Now that my son is also home on the weekends, playing games on the weekends will be taking away time from painting on the weekends, so Q2 may not be that high in points.  Later today/tonight I will work on updating my Painting Queue with items for Q2 and we shall how much of that gets completed.

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Guild Ball: New Errata v4.3 Just Released! (March 2020)

The new errata for Guild Ball v4.3 just was released on the Steamforged Blog, you can read about all the changes HERE.

It has been six months since the last errata so we knew this one was coming soon and then it was confirmed this past Saturday on the SFG live keynote.

Once I get all the cards updated for 4x6 printing I will post them in the Game Resources section of the blog.

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Weekly Chronicle 2020 #13

Well week #13 is in the books, it was not as exciting as it should have been attending AdeptiCon 2020, but we made the most of it and were able to play 6 games here at home.

Painting wise, nothing was completed except for a few colors on some 'Termagants', looks like my next batch of 5 will not be done this quarter and will slide into Q2 for the year.

In regards to gaming, as mentioned above, 6 games were played this past weekend.  You can read each of daily recaps HERE, HERE and HERE.  We were able to get in games of Kill Team, MeSBG, DCU, X-Wing and Warhammer 40,000 a nice variety of games for the weekend (just like a convention).

Hopefully the next 'DraganCon II' does not fall on another convention weekend.

Models Completed: 0
Games Played: 6

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Daily Chronicle: "DraganCon I" Sunday 3/29/2020 Recap

Today was Day 3 of "DraganCon I" and instead of a larger 3000 point game of Warhammer 40,000 as originally planned, we still had to get our 2000 points ITC game in, so that is what was played today.

We are still playing through the ITC Mission packet, so today's game was 'Scenario 3: Nexus Control'

I was playing an Imperial Fists list without the core of my army (the 'Centurions') just to try and lighten up some of the shooting from the Fists vs Dark Angels, but being able to be the attacker, the Imperial Fists still had too much firepower for the Dark Angels.  The Dark Angels were wiped out during Round 4 with a 30-7 win for the Imperial Fists.

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Daily Chronicle: "DraganCon I" Saturday 3/28/2020 Recap

Day 2 of "DraganCon I" was yesterday, Saturday March 28th and we veered a little bit from our original schedule.  On ur schedule was suppose to be a 2000 point game of Warhammer 40,000 followed by a 1000 point.  We ended up starting the day with the 1000 point and ran a bit longer than expected (since we were watching the Games Workshop Preview show) that instead of doing a 2000 point game afterwards, we played a game of X-Wing instead later in the evening.

Our first game of of the day was Warhammer 40,000, 1000 point of Astra Militarium (Imperial Guard) vs Salamanders (Space Marines).  It has been a long time since I broke out my Imperial Guard and was kind of nice seeing them on the table again.  We played the mission "Front Line Warfare" from Chapter Approved 2019 with a "Search and Destroy" deployment zones.

My Imperial Guard were not hitting as good as what my Imperial Fists usually do (hitting n 4+), but I think the shear number of models overwhelmed the Salamanders.  'Vulkan' and a unit of 'Terminators' were really the only threat my IG had and it was big threat.  They came smashing through my right flank but it was a bit too late for them and I was securing a lead with Victory Points.  The end result was a 17-7 win for the Imperial Guard after Round 5.

Once we put these armies away, like I mentioned above it was getting late already.  We decided to get the table ready for X-Wing and start playing once dinner was done.

We both decided to build a new Hyperspace list (we kind of had too since all of our old lists have changed) and Hyperspace seems to be the go to norm now for tournament games (Hyperspace cycles through available cards you can use throughout the year).

I played a Scum list with Boba Fett, Fenn Rau and a Zealous Recruit while my son played the Rebel Alliance with Luke (of course), Han and a Blue Squadron Escort.  This was a close battle bit not having any shields on Fenn and the Zealous Recruit really hurt especially when their abilities kick in when they are in their opponents faces.  Boba Fett held his own and almost finished of Han Solo (but left him with 2) and the Scum lost to the Rebels 86-314.

For Sunday we are hoping for 2 games of Warhammer 40,000..... for sure we are getting in 1.

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Daily Chronicle: "DraganCon I" Friday 3/27/2020 Recap

I wrote the other day how my son and I would be spending the weekend gaming in the absence of AdeptiCon 2020, and yesterday kicked off our three day weekend of gaming.

We started the day off getting ready to play a game of Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team at 125 points.  Being this is only our second game of Kill Team, we introduced the use of Command Points in this game, but just the non faction ones for now.

Once we got the table and our armies ready to go, it was already 10:00 AM so we decided to watch the the live keynote session from Steamforged Games on YouTube.  I mainly was just paying attention to the talks about Guild Ball and how this Monday there will be an errata coming out for the game.  Once we were done listening about Guild Ball, we just kept it playing in the background.


Kill Team

As I mentioned above, this was our second game of Kill Team, so we used the second mission in the Core rulebook for Matched Play, "Take Prisoners".  Seeing how both of our armies (Imperial Fists and Dark Angels) like to stand and shoot, I had feeling while reading this mission, the game may end up in a tie.

Sure enough I was right, even though my Imperial Fists killed more of the Dark Angels, neither of us met any of the criteria and scored no actual Victory Points.  The gamed ended at the end of Turn 4, 0-0.  Originally our plan was to get in two games of Kill Team, but it was no lunch and we took a break and wanted to get started in the other two games systems.

MeSBG

After we finished lunch (fine take out from McDonald's) we prepped the table for a game of Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game.  Just like two weeks ago we elected to play 400 points and a scenario from the new "Matched Play Guide", it was randomly determined and we played "Fog of War".  My sons 400 point list was very different that his last game, instead of running some Gondor Warriors, he wanted to have fun and just run Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli.  In this mission we had to selected a non Leader Character who we wanted to target, along with a piece of Terrain, keeping our own Leader alive and keep the Army from becoming broken.  I could not choose his Leader Aragorn, so I selected Legolas, and since I only had one Character, the King of the Dead, my son chose him.

Basically with only 3 models on his side and 20 on mine, it was not that hard to surround his modes.  He kept Legolas back a bit to try and get a few shots, I sent one warband to my right flank to go and capture the terrain piece and the rest of army concentrated on the three.

I lost a few of my Army of the Dead, but I managed to wrap up Aragorn with the King and 5 models for support and after 2 rounds of combat, Aragorn was slain.  U next I concentrated on Legolas seeing he was the model I was going to score points off of, it was not to difficult, once surrounded, there was not much he can do and the Elf boy went down.  His army was now broken and we rolled to end the game (1-2 it ends, 3+ we continue) a 2 was rolled and the game was over.  I managed with my Army of the Dead to achieve all 12 VP's to his 3 VP's.

We finished that game around mid afternoon and then started to prep the table for DC Universe Miniature Game.

DCU

Back on January 1st in my "What's in store for 2020" post, I mentioned about trying DC Universe Miniature Game (DCU) this year and hopefully getting in a game back in January, well January became March now and we finally got in our test game.  We originally were going to play with the full 60 points (about 5 models) but we both decided to just play with 3 and pretty much the same 3.  My son played Justice League with Superman, Batman and Green Lantern and I plated the Villains with models from the Crime Syndicate box, Ultraman, Owlman and Power Ring.  The scenario that we chose was the just the first one from the rulebook, "The Artefacts".

The game played very slow, not because of the rules, but because we were still learning them, but it seems like it will play at a pretty decent pace.  Last year I played 24 games of BMG (Batman) and I honestly think I enjoyed the mechanics of DCU than BMG (2e).  It is nice that each model has a Power Level and you can elect to spend those points however you want, standing still and just punching or moving or shooting.  The Crime Syndicate ended up winning this game 5-2 and only leaving Superman left on the table for the Justice League.

I am actually really looking forward to trying this game again sooner than later and possibly with the full 60 points.  Who knows, I may even paint a few of my DCU specific models.  I know Warhammer 40,000 for 2020 is my go to game, but we definitely need to keep this one up there also.

Up for today is a couple games of Warhammer 40,000.

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Daily Chronicle: "DraganCon I" Schedule Of Events

As already mentioned plenty of times since being cancelled, AdeptiCon 2020 was suppose to take place this weekend, starting tonight and all the way through Sunday.

When the cancellation was announced, then my son and a few friends were going to get together and play some games.  Now all three of our states are on "stay at home" orders so that cancelled those plans.  The weekend is now going to just be my son and me, seeing how both of our names is Dragan, the weekend is going to be called "DraganCon", I even made a cool looking logo for it.

Originally for AdeptiCon, I was still working on Thursday (from the hotel) and only had my schedule set for Friday-Sunday, that is still the plan.  We are going to start out with multiple smaller games on Friday and then finally a larger game on Sunday.

Here is the schedule of events we have laid out for the first DraganCon I:

Friday
Kill Team (125 points, 2 games)
MeSBG (400 points)
DC Universe Miniature Game (60 points)

Saturday
Warhammer 40,000 (2000 points, ITC Mission)
Warhammer 40,000 (1000 points, CA2019 Eternal War)

Sunday
Warhammer 40,000 (3000 points, CA2019 Maelstrom of War / Schemes of War)

I had talked about trying DCU back in January and we never got around to it, I finally put together some Crime Syndicate that are for DCU and we'll spend the rest of Friday afternoon into the evening learning how to play the game.

Saturday will see us playing 2000 points ITC again (but I am going to be paying my Imperial Fists without my big nasty unit) and hopefully in the morning we'll be breaking to listen/read about the Games Workshops previews that are suppose to take place.  The afternoon will then be a nice little 1000 point game of armies we have not played in awhile, I am breaking out my old Imperial Guard for this game.

Then on Sunday, my friend from IL always talks about how fun the Schemes of War games are for Warhammer 40,000, so why not go big and play 3000 points using the Tactical Objectives to play the game for fun.  We start in the morning and take our time throughout the day to play the game.

I will try and remember to take a few pictures and maybe a quick recap for each day.

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Daily Chronicle: Corona-19 update from Games Workshop

This morning I woke up to an email from Games Workshop with an important Corona19 update.

Hi Everyone,

Seems it’s finally time to stay at home and tackle that pile of sprue you’ve been stashing under the bed and finish that half-painted unit that’s been languishing on your desk.

The safety and wellbeing of all our customers and staff are paramount to everyone here at Games Workshop. In response to the developing global situation surrounding the spread of COVID-19, and following the advice and instruction from both the government here in the UK and throughout the world – we are closing Games Workshop sites around the globe.

This means that all our Warhammer and Games Workshop stores will be shut from the 24th March until an initial date of the 14th April. We’ll also be closing our factory and distribution centres – so our online stores (Games Workshop, Forge World and Black Library) won’t be selling or shipping any physical products during this period either. If you’ve recently placed an order and are waiting for it to arrive, please give us 48 hours to contact you. If you've still got questions after that, then please drop our Customer Service team a line via email, they’ll be valiantly working from home to ensure you’re supported over this period.

Now, more than ever, the wonderful spirit of friendship and cooperation that binds Warhammer hobbyists around the world is needed. With that in mind, the Warhammer Community and Warhammer TV teams are bunkered down in their hobby rooms at home ready to update warhammer-community.com with fun Warhammer news, articles and content each and every day.

And, of course, you’ll also still be able to keep yourself entertained with some cracking ebooks and audio dramas from Black Library’s digital offering.

Most importantly, everyone stay safe – be supportive to the people around you, and keep your mind and body happy and healthy. When this all blows over, we’ll get back to throwing dice together soon enough!

Sincerely,

Andy Smillie
Global Head of Warhammer Community Team
Tuesday 24th March 2020

It looks like I will only be painting the models I already had purchased for awhile.  I am not sure what happens with the new "Saga of the Beast" expected to released this Saturday, maybe the US distributors already received these items and they will still ship out.

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Battle Report: Kill Team 3/22/2020 (Core "Sweep And Clear")

On Sunday I rolled out my new TABLEWAR Kill Team mat, set up some terrain and my son and I played our very first Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team game at 125 points each of my Imperial Fists vs Dark Angels.

I decided to start with one of the Matched Play missions in the Core Rulebook, so the mission was "Sweep And Clear".

The objective of this mission was to secure Objectives at the end of the battle with each one being worth 3 VP and earning 1 VP for each enemy taken out of action.

At the end of the battle (which happened at the end of Round 4) we were all tied up on enemies killed at 3 a piece, but the Dark Angels were holding 3 Objectives to the Imperial Fists 1, so my Imperial Fists had lost the first game of Kill Team 12-6.

For our very first game of Kill Team, we did not use the "Scouting Phase", which I noticed events like AdeptiCon do not use this phase also during setup of the mission, and we did not use any Command Points yet.  We wanted to get an idea of how the game mechanics worked before using Command Points.  When we play on Friday, we'll add the Command Points in and see how the game goes.

I think once we get all the mechanics down with the game, this will be a very nice fast pace game to play, it will even allow to try out different armies/models that I have been looking at.

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Battle Report: W40K 3/21/2020 (ITC2020 "Cut to the Heart")

This past Saturday my son and I played our first 2000 point game of Warhammer 40K (8th) using the ITC2020 Missions (second time playing with the full ITC rules).  Instead of just randomly rolling a mission from the packet, we are making our way through the packet first and the second mission was "Cut to the Heart".

It was Imperial Fists once again for me and Dark Angels for my son with a twist that he added 'Draigo' from the Grey Knights as an Auxiliary Support Detachment.  My Secondary Missions consisted of: Marked for Death, Ground Control and Old School, my son chose: Born for Greatness, Behind Enemy Lines and Old School.

I had a pretty decent Turn 1 where I managed to kill 4 Units to my sons 1 and took an early lead for the Round 4-2.  The Dark Angels tried to keep it close with most Rounds scoring 4-2 for the Imperial Fists and although the Imperial Fists just about tabled the Dark Angels, they still scored quite a few points between the Primary and Secondary Missions.  The end result was a 32-17 win for the Imperial Fists.  Right now the Dark Angels do not have much that can isolate my Centurions, they are just wreaking havoc and a core essential for my Imperial Fists.  'Draigo' did come into my battle lines and wreak havoc on my 'Whirlwind' and 'Eliminator' Units and then finally taking out my Warlord 'Chapter Master Captain' before he could be slain himself.

I am working on a 2000 point list to try without the Centurions in them, they will not be fully painted by the weekend, but that's OK.

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Weekly Chronicle 2020 #12 (Week of AdeptiCon)

Even though COVID-19 has hit the world and a lot of people are working on painting projects, my output of models completed did not increase that much.  I ave been working from home for the last 13 years and currently still working (thankfully) so COVID-19 has not really affected me much except for cancelling all the events that were planned.

The only item that was completed was my 'Whirlwind I' that I posted last Tuesday, and I did sit done for a little bit to get some paint on the next batch of 5 'Termagants'.

Over the weekend though, my son and I did manage to get in 2 games.  On Saturday we played our first 2000 point ITC game of Warhammer 40K, and on Sunday it was our first try at playing Kill Team.  I will work on a battle report recap later today for each of those.

As the post title says, this is the week of AdeptiCon 2020, or it was suppose to be.  I still have my vacation day planned for Friday and my son also has the time off.  The plan as of now is for our friend Frank to come up for the weekend to get in some games, as of now our 2 States do not have a "stay at home" order in place, but that can change any minute.  If he cannot make it up, my son and I will still make a weekend of gaming (not as hectic as AdeptiCon or as many games played) but we will still try to get in quite a few.

Models Completed: 1
Games Played: 2

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Kill Team: TABLEWAR Dbl Sided 'Urban Combat' + 'Badlands' F.A.T. Mat Gaming Mat

Come the end of the month I think I want to give Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team a try.  Most games are played at around 125 points (so just a few models) and the gaming area is much smaller (30"x22").  If the game plays fast, then I think it would be a good fill in for the weeknight gaming and leave the larger games of Warhammer 40,000 on the weekends.

I have plenty of gaming mats already (too many too count) ranging from 2'x2' to '6x4' but I do not own one for the size of Kill Team.  Yes we could play on any mat and mark off the needed areas, but that is not me, I need a mat just for Kill Team.

I ventured off to the two sites I usually by my mats from, Frontline Gaming and TABLEWAR and checked out the designs from both companies.  One of the things that hooked my on the mats at TABLEWAR is that they are double sided for Kill Team, that's a bonus.  I went ahead and purchased the Dbl Sided 'Urban Combat' + 'Badlands' F.A.T. Mat Gaming Mat and my new mat arrived the other day.

Now all we have to do is give Kill Team a try.

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W40K: Imperial Fists 'Whirlwind I'

Besides all the models I recently purchased for a Tyranid army, I still have a pretty healthy backlog of models for my Imperial Fists.  The Imperial Fists are now my "core" army that I will be mostly playing and expanding on (though that does not rule out any future Space Marine Chapters) and will be concentrating with them for the NOVA Open in September.

One of the models that was sitting on my shelf was a Space Marine 'Whirlwind' and there is a good chance this will make my list for the NOVA, so I spent some time over the weekend getting it assembled and prep for painting.  I elected to mount the missile pod in a down position as if the vehicle was moving, even though it can be removed from the chassis, it will be easier to store in my pluck foam.

 Whirlwind I

 Whirlwind I

Whirlwind I

Painting Points: 10

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Weekly Chronicle 2020 #11

Well it has been a pretty sad week with as we all know AdeptiCon being cancelled, my countdown timer on the blog is already reset to the next convention which is NOVA Open in September, let us just hope that by then COVID-19 is done with.

In my other gaming related news for the week, it has just been another standard week for me, nothing was finished painting wise, but I did start on a model over the weekend and should be ready for tomorrow.  I have been slacking on the 5 'Termagants' I still have ready to go, I really do need to get those done.  I also did purchase another piece of terrain for our Warhammer 40K table and got it assembled, so now all of our BMG buildings have been removed off of our Ruined City table.

Gaming related news it was also a good weekend, usually we get in one game a week if we are lucky, on Saturday we managed to play two games, a game of MeSBG and one of Warhammer 40K.  This Saturday we will venture into our first 2000 point game of Warhammer 40K in 8th Edition and using the ITC Missions/Rules once again.  It is time to start prepping my 2000 point lists that I am debating on for NOVA Open, I have just under six months to decide on a list and get some models painted.

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Battle Report: W40K 3/14/2020 (ITC2020 "Seize Ground")

As I mentioned this morning, I was able to get in two games yesterday (with the first being MeSBG) and the second game was Warhammer 40,000. 

The new rules for ITC 2020 were recently released at the end of February and we were going to wait till after AdeptiCon was over to start playing these rules/missions, but since AdeptiCon was over, we thought we would try our first full ITC game with 1500 points, seeing how it was our first time playing with all the Secondary Missions/Objectives we wanted to make sure we were playing it right (next weekend we will try a full 2000 point game).

Since it was running a bit late after our MeSBG game, I just decided to play my 1500 point Imperial Fist list that I was planning on for the AdeptiCon Friendly.

For now, we just started with the first Mission in the ITC packet, "Seize Ground".

I chose my Secondary Missions of: Headhunter, Marked for Death and Ground Control.  My son with his Dark Angels choose: Born for Greatness, Behind Enemy Lines and Old School.

My son chose to go second and pick the Deployment Map and his Deployment Zone, so my Imperial Fists were going first.

Well the Imperial Fists with their 'Centurion' squad are now match for the Dark Angels, the Fists managed to table the Dark Angels.  Although, the Dark Angels had a pesty Captain that just did not want to die, and actually took out Tor in close combat.  That was the moral victory for the Dark Angels.

End result was 33-7 Imperial Fists.

I actually enjoyed playing the ITC Mission and scoring each Turn/Round on the score sheets (I printed/lamented custom one for Imperial Fists and Dark Angels).  Looking forward to trying the rest of the missions.

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